Thursday, December 06, 2012

Top Hospitals List has 13 rural facilities, 5 in Maine

A record number of rural hospitals have been included on a prestigious, nonprofit health-care organization's annual Top Hospitals List. The Leapfrog Group's list is "the most competitive national hospital quality award in the country," and "recognizes hospitals that deliver the highest quality of care by preventing medical errors, reducing mortality for high-risk procedures, and reducing hospital readmissions," a press release says. Thirteen rural hospitals made this year's list of 92.

The Leapfrog Hospital Survey says it is one of the most rigorous such surveys, and provides a complete picture of a hospital's safety, quality and use of resources. The 13 rural hospitals are in Florida, Iowa, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maine, Michigan, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Tennessee.

Five of the top 13 hospitals are in Maine, the most rural state in terms of population and the only state with more than one hospital on the list. Leapfrog credits the Maine Health Management Coalition, a Portland-based healthcare nonprofit, for the high number of Maine hospitals on the list, Lindsay Tice of the Bangor Daily News reports. MHMC "has pushed hospitals to complete Leapfrog's survey and publicly report their data," Tice writes. (Read more)

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